Tagged: Gender

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Militarization of Rape in American Society

Sexual harassment, assault, and rape are topics that are very difficult to discuss.  American society has taken strides to develop programs, protocols, and legal actions to help victims of these heinous crimes. Despite these efforts, there are still environments where women and men experience this act of violence at disproportionately high rates. In the newly released documentary, The Invisible War, we are exposed to the high incidence of rape in the United States military. The documentary opens up with a caption that...

Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology

Gender Bias in Mentoring Practices

In a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, a group of scholars reported on the continued gender discrimination in the hard sciences. The researchers asked 127 male and female professors in biology, chemistry, and physics to rate male and female job candidates for a position in their labs. The portfolios of the candidates were exactly the same, but half used the name, “Jennifer,” and the other half, “John.” The professors rated...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality

Feminism and Migration Studies

The relationship between gender and migration is a hot topic in the social sciences and humanities. Increasingly, more books and articles, as well as conferences and working groups of scholars, tackle how gender intersects with migratory processes. For example, I am part of a group of 2011 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Dissertation Proposal Development fellows, all of whom situate their work in the field of “gender and migration.” The rise of this type of work can be attributed to...

Gender & Sexuality / Science & Technology

Rosie O'Donnell Reminds Us About Women's Heart Health

Last week, media sources reported that Rosie O’Donnell had a heart attack. Though Rosie explained that she did “google” her symptoms, she did not believe she was having a heart attack and never called 911. Like many women, Rosie explained that she did not know enough about female heart issues, specifically identifying the problem and getting immediate medical attention. Rosie hopes she can use her fame and platform to raise awareness about heart attacks and issues in women. While Rosie...

Gender & Sexuality

A World Beyond/Without Gender?

This past weekend was a busy one for those of us who travelled to Denver, CO for the annual American Sociological Association meeting. As usual, the conference was replete with interesting and insightful research projects. But this year’s theme, “Real Utopias: Emancipatory Projects, Institutional Designs, Possible Futures,” inspired conversations far more philosophical and theoretical than social scientists might have expected. I had the pleasure of attending one such panel—“A World Beyond Gender,” with Barbara Jane Risman, Judith Lorber, and Michael...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

A Look at Domestic Violence Related Asylum Cases

  Last month,  a Guatemalan woman, N-S-, won her domestic violence based asylum case after seven years in the United States immigration court system.  Her case is similar to the story of many other women who flee their countries in order to receive protection from their abusive husbands. Until recently, courts rejected these types of claims, arguing that their issues were personal, not cultural issues (see Sinha 2001). Now, with the help of organizations like the Center for Gender and...

Teaching & Learning Guide

Fiction in the Sociology Classroom?

  This summer, I tried something new with my sociology of gender class. Rather than assigning a traditional textbook or a reader, I had the class read a work of fiction based on social science research (along with a few topical nonfiction works). I was nervous to see if my students, who are used to big lecture halls and multiple choice tests, would feel comfortable discussing the novel and would come away from the class with a better understanding of...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Gender and Race Politics in the Discourse of Mothering

Mothering has been in the news lately. TIME Magazine’s cover story on breastfeeding in May caused quite a stir; so did Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece for the Atlantic, which discussed the difficulty women face when trying to balance work and family. TIME’s piece points to the increasing pressure on women to do everything right when it comes to being a mom: The rise in attachment parenting (even in a watered-down form) places great responsibility on women to do all they can,...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Attack on Anita Sarkeesian: From Media Analysis to Anti-Feminism and Online Harassment

AUTHOR’S WARNING: This post, and especially the links leading from it, contains images and language that some readers may find offensive or unsettling. Anita Sarkeesian is clever, eloquent, and seemingly fearless, but the recent fame she has achieved is not entirely pleasant. With a B.A. in communications from California State University, Northridge and a Master’s degree in social and political thought from York University, Sarkeesian is thoroughly knowledgeable and aptly qualified for her role as media critic and feminist activist....

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Childcare and Work: The Privilege of Choice

“If you don’t believe that childcare is work, then try telling your parents or whoever took care of you that raising you was not work.  I don’t imagine that would go over well.”  I say this in my social problems class as a counterpoint to the assertion that welfare-recipients are lazy and immoral.  Most recently the sentiment was employed to defend wealthy “stay-at-home mom,” and wife of presidential candidate, Ann Romney.  The sentiment that childcare is work is fairly uncontested...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Teachable Moments?: The Case of Penn State

I’ve read a lot about the shocking revelation that a former coach at Penn State allegedly molested up to 8 boys and raped at least one.  The story is all the more shocking given the grand jury testimony that points to a possible cover up by Penn State officials.  Indeed, media coverage of who knew what and when has almost eclipsed coverage of the original alleged crimes.  Two Penn State administrators were charged with perjury and amid the outrage the...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Another Two Cents on England (and Crawley): Masculinity, Culture, and Tucson

As is often the case with graduate students, I just spent several months in a dissertation-induced haze and only recently had a chance to go through the latest issues of Gender & Society. Among these was the February 2011 issue that included a symposium on Paula England’s 2010 article on the “uneven/stalled gender revolution.” England’s over-reliance on the structural and institutional aspects of gender was underscored by several savvy pieces of Sociology, including a response by Sara Crawley that emphasizes...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

wikipedia and the gender neutral voice

I recently came across a tool that has been around for a couple of years. GenderAnalyzer claims that it can determine the gender of the author of any text that you point it to. It learns to do this by looking at thousands of blogs and the corresponding gender of the author. Give it a try: genderanalyzer.com As of today, it looks like it has a 63% success rate; not impressive but better than chance. Leaving aside how serious we...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Cyborg Systems: Sociology's Proper Unit of Analysis

The increasing centrality of the Internet in our daily lives has precipitated a spate of theorizing about how we – as humans and as a society – are changing (or not) due to the constant technological mediation of our most basic interactions and activities.  Let’s face it: This sort of theorizing is populated mostly by men of considerable privilege (with some very notable exceptions).  A cynic might hold that the problems concerning human techno-social interactions are relatively insignificant compared to...

Gender & Sexuality / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture

The Clothes Make the (Heterosexual) Man

Dress codes in schools have long been a source of intergenerational conflict, control, and increasingly obvious, a way to police gender norms and sexuality.  In an article that interrogates these instances of specific gender and sexuality “violations” through clothing and accessories, we can see both an increase in apparel as a means of identity formation and exploration but also a trend that has received little attention.  Why is it that anytime a child or teen decides to transgress norms through...

Gender & Sexuality / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Gender-neutral housing comes to Princeton University

By Rachael Liberman As a result of the sustained efforts of  Undergraduate Student Government Life Committee members, a pilot program for gender-neutral housing will come to Princeton University this spring. This means that students can apply to the Spelman Hall upperclassman-housing lottery in mixed-gender groups rather than all female or all male. According to a letter written to university members by Student Government President Connor Diemand-Yauman, “Suites in the Spelman Hall housing lottery would be designated as GNH. Unlike in...